


Ineluctabilis

by EightDrinkAmy



Category: Carmilla (Web Series)
Genre: Angst, F/F, Reincarnation
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2015-05-06
Updated: 2015-05-06
Packaged: 2018-03-29 08:31:08
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Graphic Depictions Of Violence, Major Character Death
Chapters: 1
Words: 3,885
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/3889528
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/EightDrinkAmy/pseuds/EightDrinkAmy
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Laura is an old soul, one that Carmilla has known (or known of) for over two hundred years. (As if episode 20 and beyond doesn’t exist)</p><p>I also didn't realize Carmilla was set in Austria before and assumed Silas was in Canada, by the way, so that's why that part is a little off xD</p>
            </blockquote>





	Ineluctabilis

The first time Carmilla had seen Laura, it had been at a ball in 1843, held on her family’s plantation. Carmilla wasn’t going to lie; she’d gone for the champagne. It was a pleasantry she often wasn’t afforded, and anyway, the Crockers (for that was Laura’s surname at the time) were rather influential. It would have done her good to acquaint herself with them despite the fact that Carmilla absolutely abhorred slavers.

That was, of course, before she’d met their daughter. Laura, a tiny girl of eighteen, was the most interesting person Carmilla had met in years. She was smart, admirably so, and kind. She’d spoken about the miseries of slaving and, in a hushed tone, had told her that it was a secret dream of hers to help with the Underground Railroad. “My father would murder me,” she’d said, “but what I would face is nothing compared to what the slaves have been put through.”

Carmilla wasn’t sure when she’d fallen for Laura, but she knew it would only cause her heartbreak. Despite her misgivings, though, she’d gone back to the plantation to visit Laura time and time again, until one day the Crocker girl had told her during her nightly visit that she loved her, and also that she must leave. Her eyes, though expressing sadness, had had a glint of excitement in them.

It was dangerous. Carmilla had told her that, but Laura was dead set on joining the Underground Railroad and the abolitionist movement. Her heart aching with worry for the first time since she’d been alive, since she’d been truly human, Carmilla told Laura that she’d come with her. That she had to keep her safe.

Even then, though Laura was unaware of Carmilla’s actual physical abilities, she had accepted the help with a smile, chirping about what a difference they were going to make in some people’s lives.

And they did, for a while. They’d helped as many slaves escape as was humanly possible, and it had been fun. The work was exciting, adventurous, dangerous, even for Carmilla.

It made her feel alive again.

 

 ——————————-

Carmilla never saw the end coming. Their hideout had been rushed by the sheriff and several plantation owners who had found out what was going on behind their backs. They were armed to the teeth with shotguns and derringers, any guns they could get their hands on. Laura was the first to be shot.

Carmilla didn’t know what to do. She picked Laura up and ran fast and far, easily outdistancing her pursuers. By the time she’d been able to set Laura down, though, she was barely breathing, the bullet lodged in her chest drawing the life out of her. She couldn’t be saved.

Carmilla fled after Laura died, her grasp on reality slipping away with the realization that her lover was gone. She left the south, completely heartbroken, and began rebuilding her life in Toronto. She went to the university after coming up blank for what she should do, and upon graduation, she left again.

Fourteen years she spent in her next home in Winnipeg. She took blood from the unsuspecting when she needed it and only when she needed it. It was one of those times, when she’d very nearly starved herself for lack of caring, that she finally decided it was time to quench her thirst. She snuck into a home, one she hadn’t entered before, and found the bedchamber of a young woman. She did not hesitate before plunging her fangs into the girl’s neck, for she could hardly control herself in such a state of hunger, and did not notice until she’d gotten a better grip on the sleeping girl and pulled her onto her back to find a richer spot to feed from that this girl had a familiar face.

She had Laura’s face.

It had been eighteen years since Carmilla had seen that face, and the sight of it shocked her out of her feeding state, her fangs retracting and her eyes wide. If her heart still beat, it would be racing.

She closed off the wounds in the Laura-doppelganger’s neck and left the house, only to return the next afternoon to make sure she hadn’t harmed the girl too permanently. What Carmilla hadn’t expected was for the eyes to be the same, and the voice. Certainly not the name.

But the girl had answered the knock at her door with the same bright eyes as Laura, the same chipper voice, and introduced herself with the same name. The surname was “Lanier”, but that was where the differences ended.

Carmilla was wary but inwardly ecstatic. Laura had no memory of her, no recollection of their adventures together, but it was the same person. It had to be. They talked for the rest of the day and into the night until Laura’s parents came home and bade Carmilla goodnight.

This Laura fell for Carmilla as easily as the last, and once again, Carmilla found the light in her reignited. Two years they spent together. Though the relationship was kept a secret, it was a sturdy one, and every day that Carmilla got to see Laura made her chest burst with genuine happiness. No problems arose until one night when Carmilla ran into another vampire attempting to take the town for his own.

Not all vampires were as docile as Carmilla, and this one wanted a bloodbath. Carmilla told him,  _begged_  him, to take whatever he wanted so long as he let Laura and her family escape.

Of course – and Carmilla will never forgive herself for not seeing it coming – this only agitated the vampire and drove him straight to Laura. She was drained of blood before Carmilla could reach her.

 

 ——————————-

Carmilla did not see Laura for many, many years after that. She was convinced that the last reincarnation was a second chance for her to fix what she had let happen in 1843, and she had failed. All the better that she hadn’t met Laura again, she thought, for I seem to bring nothing but her own death.

And, in 2014, when she’d returned to Toronto for the fourth time in the past eighty years to attend Silas University, she could not believe her eyes when she walked into her dorm room and was faced with  _her_.

She did everything she could to keep Laura away from her. It wasn’t as difficult as she’d planned; she’d already become rather bitter over the years, and this reincarnation seemed to have a natural distaste for her. “All the better,” Carmilla told herself. “All the better.”

She knew that it was for Laura’s safety, but it hurt to treat her with such disrespect. It didn’t take long before she broke and began getting close to Laura again. She simply couldn’t help it.

As it turned out, this dark-and-mean façade was the wrong approach. It made Laura suspicious and she, ever so smart and with the assistance of her friends (and Danny, Carmilla thought, jealousy brewing inside of her), found out about Carmilla’s vampirism.

It scared her. It really, truly scared her that for the first time in over one hundred fifty years, Laura knew this about her. There were so many ways it could go wrong, but Carmilla resisted the urge to flee and stayed with Laura, loathe to be apart from her yet again.

It was only when Laura began reciprocating that Carmilla knew she had to stop. She couldn’t keep pretending that she wouldn’t cause Laura’s death again if she stuck around. So, when Laura went on a fourteen-day trip for a short study abroad session in Paris, Carmilla began to fast.

It was suicide in the slowest, most painful way. It hadn’t occurred to her until the tenth day that it could have been easier. It didn’t matter anymore anyway; she didn’t even have the strength to stick herself with a stake. Nonetheless, she kept fasting, knowing it wouldn’t be long before she wasted away to nothing, and then Laura would no longer be in danger. It was better that way, she thought.

And by the fourteenth day, Carmilla was no longer lucid. Still alive (or, undead), but unable to think or even to open her eyes. Her eyelids were glued to her sockets and her skin was sallow and pulled taut over her frame.

It was this that Laura came home to after being away for two weeks.

At first, she thought it was a prank. “Carmilla?” Laura called softly as she shut the door behind her and dropped her bags. “Hey, knock it off; you can’t trick me.”

Nothing.

“You’ve got a date with  _moi_  in it for you if you give it up now,” she joked. Her uneasy grin faded from her face when Carmilla still didn’t respond, and her heart leapt to her throat as she rushed toward the vampire’s prone form.

“Carmilla?” She shook her shoulder, growing frantic. “Carmilla!”

 

 ——————————-

When Carmilla woke up, it was to the overwhelming stench of fresh blood. She thought that it must have been a hallucination, a figment of her blood-starved imagination, but when she opened her eyes, she came to the sickening realization that, no, the blood was real, and what she could smell came from the front of her shirt and the floor, where a body lay idly as if it were a mannequin.

_No…_

Carmilla shook her head in horror.

_Not Laura. Not Laura._

She’d been the cause of Laura’s death before, but never had she been the one to actually  _do_  it.

_Oh, gods…._

It felt as if her entire world was crashing down around her. She fell to her knees beside Laura, choking on dry sobs, praying that this was all a nightmare. One awful, terrible nightmare meant to test her.

It wasn’t, though. And it was hours before Carmilla calmed down enough to notice the folded piece of paper on Laura’s desk in front of her laptop. A heart was drawn on the front, and she recognized Laura’s flowery hand as she opened it.

 _“Carmilla,”_  it started, as if it were nothing more than a letter.  _“I know that I may not survive what I’m about to do. It’s a sacrifice I’m willing to make. I don’t know why you suddenly decided to starve yourself (I know this was on purpose; don’t even try to convince me otherwise), but I can’t let you die. If this was some suicide attempt, which is what I’m guessing, I need you to promise that you’ll stay. I’m giving my life up for this, so don’t be a bitch and throw it all away. Show this note to LaFontaine and Perry; they have to know that this was my choice. Don’t blame yourself. And hey, maybe we’ll meet again in another life?_

_…Okay, so that was way more cliché than I intended. Sorry about that._

_Anyway, I guess I have to go now. I’m afraid you won’t hold up for much longer._

_~Laura_

_PS, I love you._

_PPS, I know you love me too. It doesn’t matter that you never said it. I know._

Carmilla sat back, clutching the paper to her chest. She felt numb. Every fiber in her body was screaming at her to find a stake, a box of matches, anything, but she couldn’t move.

Laura’s last wish was for her to stick around. Even without knowing that she was an old soul, she had given her life for Carmilla’s miserable excuse of a person to stay on the earth for a little while longer.

That needed to be respected.

So, wanting to die more than ever, Carmilla calmly kissed Laura’s forehead, stood, and vanished in a puff of smoke.

 

 ——————————-

Carmilla did her best to avoid Laura after that. She seemed to gravitate toward the other girl, and she knew that if she truly wanted to find her, she’d be able to, but she couldn’t do it. She stayed as far away as possible, and whenever she ran into one of Laura’s reincarnations, she fled.

It was miserable. Carmilla’s entire being radiated misery and dread, and she often found herself morbidly amused by how much she resembled a stereotypical vampire, but in reality, she felt nothing at all. Her happiness had been bled from her, and she couldn’t find any way to bring any kind of enjoyment back into her life. People died around her all the time, she’s watched cultures come and go and change, and yet she was untouched, unable to change or grow old or die. It was all she wanted, but she’d made Laura a promise, and she had to honor it.

Today, Carmilla was being particularly sentimental, stuck in a reverie and barely paying any mind to her surroundings, which were relatively calm for New York City that evening.

That is, until a scream pierced the night’s still air from the alley down the street.

Carmilla froze. There was no way – but then again, she would recognize Laura’s voice anywhere, even as distorted as it was.

Carmilla shot toward the alley, turning the corner fast enough to catch the two men cornering the small girl by surprise. She snapped both of their necks without hesitation, and when she finally let her eyes come to rest on Laura, the other girl’s eyes were wide with pain and fear.

“They won’t hurt you now,“ Carmilla said gently, stepping closer to Laura, who cowered against the dumpster behind her, one hand pressed against her stomach. Carmilla furrowed her brow and stepped back again, holding her hands up disarmingly. “Hey, I’m…I’m not going to hurt you either-“

Carmilla cut herself off as blood began to seep into Laura’s shirt beneath her hand, and she barely managed to catch her as she collapsed.

“L-Laura?”

She looked up at the use of her name, confusion and what almost seemed like recognition creeping through the pained fog in her eyes, but Carmilla dismissed it; now wasn’t the time to focus on her slip-ups.

Carmilla pressed her hand into the wound as she fished her phone out of her pocket. “Stay with me, Laura, okay?” she begged as she dialed the number for emergency services. “ _Please_ , just stay with me.”

 

 ——————————

Carmilla paced the waiting room, silently willing the doctor to come back with news of Laura’s condition. It hadn’t been easy to convince the police that, yes, she killed the two men in the alley in “self-defense”, but no, she wasn’t the one that had injured Laura. Luckily, after the police finally pulled their eyes out of their asses and found the knife, Carmilla was free from any immediate danger of being arrested.

When the doctor finally did return, bearing the news that Laura was stable for the time being, Carmilla practically ambushed Laura’s hospital room in her haste to see for herself that she was okay.

Laura was asleep. The heart monitor beeped a steady rhythm and her chest rose and fell slowly but evenly. She looked almost peaceful save for the medical equipment attached to her.

Carmilla took the seat beside Laura’s bed to wait, her mind already beginning to wander. She wondered were Laura’s family was; she was attacked and they should be there for her. She wondered what  _she_  was doing there. She’d dedicated decades simply to avoid Laura, yet here she was with a reincarnation who didn’t even know who she was.

Hours later, Carmilla was still Laura’s only visitor, and for that she was somewhat grateful. It meant she could talk to Laura without being interrupted by the girl’s friends and family.

The first thing Laura did when she woke up was look at Carmilla and stare. It felt uncomfortable when those eyes, usually filled with love and happiness, were closed off. Unreadable.

“How…how are you feeling? Carmilla asked awkwardly.

“Like I’ve been stabbed in the gut,” Laura said, deadpan. Carmilla opened her mouth, at a loss for words, but Laura’s features softened into a weary smile. “But you saved me, so at least I’m here and not dead in that alley.”

“I…yes.”

“And…you know my name,” she added. “So, do I actually know you from somewhere or are you just a stalker?”

Laura was joking, but Carmilla could tell there was a hint of nervousness in her voice. She wasn’t sure how to respond, honestly, and she cursed herself for not preparing something beforehand. She had two choices, and she could only hope she chose the right one.

“I can tell you the truth,” Carmilla said hesitantly. “I can be completely honest, but chances are you’re going to call bullshit and get the police back in here. Do you want me to tell you the truth?”

Laura narrowed her eyes, unsure of how serious Carmilla was being, but shrugged and shook her head a moment later. “Go ahead” she said. “I’m listening.”

Carmilla nodded. “You asked for it, cupcake,” she said, reverting back to her most recent way of speaking to Laura.

She launched into her story of the past two centuries, starting with the plantation ball. Carmilla tried to judge Laura’s reaction as she spoke, but her face was blank, devoid of any emotion toward the tale.

“The last time I saw you before now,” Carmilla said, pausing to draw a deep breath and brace herself, “you were Laura Hollis. You lived in Canada and attended Silas University, where you met me…again.” Carmilla closed her eyes and shook her head, trying desperately to keep her emotions in check. “I didn’t intend to find you there. I tried to make you hate me so you’d keep your distance. So you’d be safer. And it worked for a while, but…you found out what I was. I couldn’t keep the act up any longer, and we ended up in love once again. Then, I came to my senses and realized how badly I was endangering you, so…I waited. I waited until you went on a trip for two weeks, and then I starved myself. No blood for fourteen days should have killed me, but somehow I was still hanging on by a thread when you returned. I wasn’t conscious; I couldn’t….” Carmilla’s throat tightened. “I couldn’t stop you.”

She stopped speaking, unable to form words as she relieved the painful memory. Laura was watching her with pity and uncertainty etched across her face. She hesitated, then gently rested a hand on Carmilla’s leg. She drew strength from the gesture and shot Laura the smallest ghost of a smile before resuming her story.

“When I woke up, you…you were lying on the floor in front of me. You weren’t breathing, your heart wasn’t beating; there was blood all over me.” She swallowed the lump in her throat. “I’d killed you.”

Laura frowned, and Carmilla could tell that though she didn’t say anything, she was frightened. “Don’t worry, dear.” Carmilla smiled sadly. “I’m not starving right now. I would never hurt you.”

And, to Laura’s surprise, she found that she believed Carmilla. She nodded and gestured for her to continue.

“I found a note on your desk,” Carmilla said. “You’d written it before you died. You sacrificed yourself for me.”

Carmilla took a deep breath and opened her jacked, then pulled a folded piece of paper from an inside pocket and handed it to Laura. The faded form of a heart was on the outside, and Laura found that the creases were worn with age as she opened it.

“I’ve read it every day since that incident,” Carmilla said. “Every day. It’s the only way I can keep the promise I made you and stay here on this planet.” She shrugged. “After that, not much happened. I wandered. I fed. Whenever I accidentally found you, I ran. Until today, anyway. Today was different; I…I couldn’t let you die again if I could stop it.

“And that’s the whole story,” Carmilla finished with a sigh. “I’m warning you now: I won’t blame you if you call the cops, but the moment you do, I’m apparating right out of here.”

Laura was still staring at the note in her hands, and it was several long seconds before she looked up again, tears in her eyes.

“I remember,” she whispered. “I remember everything.”

 

 ——————————

Carmilla didn’t know what to feel. When Laura said she remembered everything, she really did mean everything, down to the color of their dresses at that first ball.

She told Laura that they would talk more once she was released from the hospital, first with the excuse that Laura’s family would question her presence, and upon learning that Laura was an orphan, with the pretense that she needed to heal, but it was really for Carmilla to regain her bearings.

And when Laura was released, Carmilla still didn’t know what to do.

“Look, Laura, I love you,” she said, “but I’m…I’m still putting you in danger. I can’t….”

She couldn’t finish the sentence, but Laura knew what she meant.  _‘I can’t watch you die again. I can’t be the cause of your death again.’_

“There’s got to be some way,” Laura murmured. “I can’t let you go back to wandering aimlessly. You were miserable….”

“And I’ll be miserable again if it means you stay safe,” Carmilla argued.

“No!” The intensity in Laura’s voice shook Carmilla. It wasn’t just this Laura speaking now. It was Laura Hollis. It was Laura Lanier and Laura Crocker. “I know everything now, and I’m not letting you do that to yourself.” She paused. “Not alone, anyway.”

Carmilla drew her eyes up from where they had been glued to the floor. “What?”

“Turn me.”

It wasn’t a suggestion. It took Carmilla several seconds to completely process what Laura was requesting (no, demanding), and when she did, she shook her head.

“No, Laura. I’ve been a vampire for four hundred years, and I can tell you from extensive experience that it isn’t something you want to be. I’m not going to turn you into a monster. And anyway, don’t you have friends? Foster parents? They would miss you. I can’t take you away from those people.”

“I was in an orphanage until I turned eighteen,” Laura said, “and I wasn’t very good at making friends in this lifetime, I guess. But I can tell you one thing for sure: you’re not a monster.”

“Yes, I am!” Carmilla argued desperately. “Don’t you understand? I’ve killed people. I’ve killed  _you!_  I’ve caused your death every time I’ve met you, and for what? My pitiful amorous feelings?”

“That’s why you need to turn me,” Laura reasoned. “If I’m a vampire, I can’t die. Not easily, anyway.”

“But if you do…I’m not sure you’ll come back.”

Carmilla’s voice cracked as she spoke, and Laura’s heart broke for her. She couldn’t imagine what it would be like in Carmilla’s position, but she understood the other girl’s misgivings. She took Carmilla’s hand and squeezed it comfortingly.

“If you turn me,” she started, “I’ll release you from your promise. If I end up dying…you don’t have to feel bad about following suit. Is that a fair deal?”

Carmilla paused, carefully considering Laura’s words. “Are you sure you want to do this?” she asked slowly. “It’s the most permanent thing there is.”

Laura nodded sincerely. “I’m positive.”


End file.
